Heh, just ambled over to this part of the site and take some comfort to see that someone did almost the exact same thing as I did the other night. Well, slightly different circumstances, but almost exactly the same damage. I bought my XC a couple weeks ago, but have hardly ridden it due to the weather. I rode it to my friend's place last weekend, and leaving his place I got a little overzealous hitting the on ramp to the freeway. The on ramp is a tricky turn, but could be a blast hitting it on the right line at speed. One of the things that makes it tricky is that there are a bunch of painted arrows and a crosswalk to go through right at the entrance of the turn. My friend had pointed out the paint danger before, but as I approached the turn, I saw a line that would miss all the paint, or at least the majority of it. I managed to hit that line and (over)confident in my ability, I rolled on the gas aggressively. The turn after the crosswalk was tighter than I remembered so I leaned harder, felt my pegs scrape, and next thing I knew the back end was gone and I was on the pavement, hearing the dreaded sound of metal on asphalt.

Fortunately, I had on full gear and it was relatively late at night so there weren't many cars (though there was one right behind me when I went down, they didn't even bother to slow down, let alone stop). I got up as soon as the momentum stopped and went to pick up my bike--pointing the wrong way in the middle of the off ramp. I picked it up, walked it to the shoulder, took a deep breath, got on and rode home. I kept hoping it was a bad dream, but unfortunately, it was all too real.

The extent of the damage was almost identical to OP's: scuffed mirror and hand guard, scuffed footpegs, slightly bent rear brake lever, and a broken signal. And of course, a bruised ego. Oh, and the steering is a little out of whack now too.

I've dropped my other bike before on a few occasions, but those have been low speed/stand still incidents. I fully expected the Tiger to go down at some point, but on dirt. This was my first actual accident and I've been chewing on humble pie for the past few days.

The cause of my accident was going faster than I should have, and on cold tires (my friend's place is half a mile, at most, from the freeway, and it was probably under 40 F that night). All in all, I know it could have been much worse, and the lesson has definitely been learned the hard way. I could have just as easily learned it on my cheap, 10 year old SV though, dangit.